Hartshorne Heritage Trails

The Hartshorne Village Residents Association have compiled a selection of three trails around Hartshorne, highlighting the village’s social and industrial heritage.

The trails mostly follows the main roads through the village and everything can be seen from the roadside, and with only some slight doubling back can all be walked as a single trail.

The trails and just some key highlights are as follows:

1. Manchester Lane to Manor Farm

The Bulls Head
- Village pub set in a building dating back to the Georgian period, that built onto an older 16th Century building. This distinction is noticeable when comparing the brickwork between the front of the building and the lower part of the building on Manchester Lane. All the business of the village historically appears to have been conducted from here, including sales of property and parish, private and Enclosure affairs.
Hartshorne Upper Hall
- Known as the Old Manor House, this Grade II* listed building is one of the few timber frame buildings remaining in South Derbyshire. Originally build as one grand house in the 1620s, it was split into three dwellings in 1910 with a two-storey brick extension on the rear. These alterations were reversed in the 1970s to preserve the original timber building, now split into two houses.
St. Peter’s Church
- Constructed in the 15th Century from local sandstone with a tower at the west end. Today only the tower remains from that 15th century building, with the nave having been rebuilt in the 19th century and the north aisle and chancel being added in 1903.

2. Church Street to the Millpond

The Admiral Rodney
- Despite the substantial front side of the building, the Admiral Rodney’s notably doesn’t have a centred front door. The original pub building had a centred door, but the right side of the Admiral Rodney today was formerly a stable that was enclosed and extended to expand the pub’s footprint. It’s possible that this extra space was needed after the demise of the Red Cow and New Inn pubs that sat near the Admiral Rodney.
Screwmill
- The old mill building in Hartshorne has undergone many iterations. Originally a corn mill powered by a large waterwheel, it was converted to drive the bellows of an iron furnace in the 17th century. In 1767, it would again be converted into a screw mill with the building being reconstructed with the current footprint it has today in 1784. The ‘screws’ it produced were what we now call bolts and it could produce 1200 screws a week. Production would stop in 1846 when the manufacture of wood screws was perfected. In 1943, it would grind corn and saw wood, with coffins being manufactured in the redundant mill building, before being completely renovated in 1987.
Site of the Millpond
- The grassland across from the old screwmill was originally a millpond, dating from when the mill was used to work iron. Separated from the road by a simple wooden fence, the pond was a popular village feature, thanks to the hard winters before the war that enabled ice skating on the pond and resident swans that would visit the nearby houses. The pond would be infilled in the 70s.

3. Site of the New Inn to Wilder Green Cottage

The Brook
- Turning off Repton Road into Brook Street, there are some old brick houses on the left hand side. 11 Brook Street is the old post office, as noted on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1888. The road curves down to the brook and an old set of terraced houses. Although the flow looks modest, this stream served a remarkable range of purposes. The Limehouse Dams were build to provide a clean supply of water to Hartshorne and were once a very well-known site for fishing. It fed the village pond for the Screwmill, fed the ponds near Nether Hall, a leather mill, Bretby Mill, osier beds and then ponds in Repton.
Wilder Green Cottage
- During the Second World War, this somewhat remote cottage served as an off-licence that sold cigarettes individually and, according to hearsay, black market goods. Apparently, this contraband was hidden in a natural sandstone cave located in the near edge of Caukley Wood. This was accessed from the footpath that runs across the field from the cottage directly to the wood. This cave was formed in the same standstone as the locally famous Anchor Church by the River Trent, which looks like a small house and allegedly once housed a hermit.
Nether Hall and Beyond
- Repton Road leads to the area known as Nether Hall and on to pass Hoofies Farm. As the road emerges from the trees, on the left the lowermost of a sequence of five reservoirs constructed on the Bretby Estate can be seen. The Repton Road is not an ancient track but was constructed following the Enclosures Act of 1766. Further along, Watery Lane leads to Bretby village and Bretby Hall.